Perfect Harmony

I'd been eyeballing this contraption for a while, and buy.com finally ran a deal on the Logitech Harmony Universal Remote w/ support for the Xbox 360.

Is it entirely necessary? Of course not. Is it nice to have if you're juggling 4 remote controls for different components of your setup? Absolutely. I'm probably about 3 years late to the party on this technology, so bear with me as I describe how neat this thing is.

The remote plugs into your computer via USB, where you tell the software what components you own and what your 'Activities' are (watching TV, watching DVDs, playing Xbox, and so forth). The remote then assigns actions to all of the physical buttons on the remote, as well as allowing you to customize buttons and labels for the 'soft' buttons that appear on the lil' green screen (4 at a time, and you can create about 10 pages of buttons per Activity).

So, let's say everything in the room is off and I press the button for "Watch TV". The remote then:

• Turns on the TV
• Sets the TV input to the cable box
• Turns on the cable box
• Turns on the receiver
• Sets the receiver input to TV

That's taking what used to be seven button presses, and reducing it to one. Think of the extra time you can now spend with your family (if you weren't already watching TV)!!

Now the volume button on the remote controls the volume for the receiver, and the channel + - buttons control the channels on the cable box. Again, the software for the remote allows you to customize all of these buttons (although I found I only needed to add ONE button to the whole shebang after the software created the default setup). The software itself is very intuitive (think TurboTax, as it asks you questions about your setups in much the same manner).

After having the remote for a whopping 24 hours, I said to myself "Hmmm ... I'm hardly even touching this remote. Was it worth it?" Then I realized that was pretty much the whole point.

Recommended!

NEW TECHNOLOGY!

Well ... maybe not NEW. Microsoft has announced a blacker version of their Xbox 360. This version includes HDMI-out (which, admittedly, would be nice) and a 120gb hard drive (compared to the 20gb that shipped with original 360s).


"It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black."

After getting over the standard "OMG I NEED THIS NOW!" reaction, I quickly realized that I most certainly do NOT need it. If anyone out there can visually tell the difference between Component and HDMI, that would be quite impressive.

Contrary to popular belief, there is NO built in HD-DVD support, and there is NO quieter/cooler-running processor. The guts are, for all intents and purposes, the same as before.

The larger hard drive would be nice, but who is filling the 20gb drive now? I'm sure there are some folks out there using these as media centers, so maybe it's a good upgrade in those cases. MS has graciously offered up the new hard drive as an add-on for $179.00.

Ok ... I'm done convincing myself there's no need to upgrade. I think.